Free Republic

Los Angeles police released security video today that captures unruly celebrants of the Lakers NBA finals victory helping themselves to merchandise at a Shell gas station convenience store blocks from the Staples Center. The footage, shot June 14 by a security camera at the rear of the store in the 600 block of West Olympic Boulevard, shows a group of about two dozen men swarming the store and helping themselves primarily to juice, soda and energy drinks in a large cooler. The mob shouted, “Free soda, free soda” as they grabbed merchandise in a two-minute rush in which they also...

“It could have been a lot worse.” So said Los Angeles Police Department Assistant Chief Earl Paysinger of the downtown L.A. melee that followed the Lakers’ victory over the Orlando Magic last Sunday. If that’s the standard the LAPD is shooting for these days, the city is in big, big trouble. By the time the last of the Lakers’ “fans” were cleared from the streets that night, eight police officers had been injured, three businesses looted, and several cars and transit buses vandalized, all broadcast live from television news helicopters. You just knew there was a problem with LAPD’s response...

Folks, the Murtha story isn’t going away. The Washington Post writes, “Murtha, who was celebrated at the LBK Ranch with a fundraiser held in his honor, last week sidestepped questions about $50 million in earmarked funds and contracts he has helped direct to Kuchera Defense Systems and Kuchera Industries Inc. since 2001. But newly obtained documents and interviews show that the current federal investigation is only the latest chapter in the troubled history of the Kuchera brothers' business ventures.” "Worried by their prospects in the House, Democrats postponed final action on a nearly $100 billion wartime spending bill until next...

Money doesn’t grow on trees for most of America. We sit down at our kitchen tables and write out checks to the phone-company, electric company, credit card-company, mortgage-company, and auto finance company every month. We clip coupons and go to the grocery store every week to put food in the mouths of our children. This is what our parents did before us. We work 40 to 60 hours a week to pay these bills and feed those mouths. It’s not easy. We do it because that is what hard working American families do. We work hard, try to save some...

The French have an odd notion of boycotts. My good friend Scott Johnson at Power Line discovers this video of a “boycott” action in France organized, apparently, by Europalestine.com, or at least publicized by them. Take a look at the uniformed thuggery that takes place in a French grocery store: [video at link] Boycotts are perfectly legitimate free-market forms of protest — but this isn’t a boycott at all. A boycott is an organized effort to stop buying products or services from some offending source. This is an organized theft ring and nothing more. Unless they’re paying for those groceries,...

First understand the FDIC, the NCUA, and the nature of the banking system. Here's the fastest lesson I can manage. Try my other writings or just search the net for more information. (Photo courtesy Luc Viator) In brief, the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) is a relic of the Great Depression designed to give depositors psychological assurance that the government will bail them out if the bank fails. It is funded by small fees on all deposits its 8,305 member banks hold. The FDIC started 2008 with about $53 billion in reserves and ended the year with $18.9 billion. Based...

It was no accident. The folks in power in Washington and on Wall Street want to pretend that the current global financial crisis -- you know, the one that reduced household net worth in the United States by $11.2 trillion in 2008, according to the Federal Reserve -- was an accident caused by some unfortunate confluence of greed and asleep-at-the-switch regulators.

Here's an example: What Obama means to Bob Dog Illinois, USA - 27 Feb 2009 What Obama means to me is that even an amoral congenital liar can get elected to the presidency. Oh wait, we learned that back in 1992.

A rising chorus of GOP leaders are protesting that the blockbuster Democratic stimulus package would provide up to a whopping $5.2 billion for ACORN, the left-leaning nonprofit group under federal investigation for massive voter fraud. Most of the money is secreted away under an item in the now $836 billion package titled “Neighborhood Stabilization Programs.” Ordinarily, neighborhood stabilization funds are distributed to local governments. But revised language in the stimulus bill would make the funds available directly to non-profit entities such as ACORN, the low-income housing organization whose pro-Democrat voter-registration activities have been blasted by Republicans. ACORN is cited by...

New York Times Pulls Punches On Wall Street Bubble Era Pay Why is no one willing to call things by their proper names, and instead resort to euphemism and double-speak? A New York Times story today, "On Wall Street, Bonuses, Not Profits, Were Real," makes its most important point in its headline, and managed to get some good data points on how rich investment bank compensation was in the peak years, but otherwise glosses over the fundamental nature of what went on. It was looting, and it is high time the media starts describing it in those terms. Let us...

Not $3.5 trillion. Not $5 trillion. ABC News now says the government has committed $7.5 trillion to bailouts. The government bailouts are an unbelievably enormous mistake (which probably won’t even work). 1) They convert debt that needs to be unwound through bankruptcy into taxpayer debt that can’t be unwound. 2) The bailouts are morally offensive, handing vast sums of taxpayer money to those who should not be getting the money. 3) If the government persists with escalating bailouts and out-of-control spending, the U.S. will come up against the limit of its ability to borrow - making the economic situation far...

One of the disadvantages of being a writer and former journalist is that I’m always sharing news and information. It’s also an advantage in times of crisis by providing instant therapy. Recipients of my Hurricane Ike email updates may have less flattering names for it. I attended a meeting on the Tuesday before Ike invaded our shores. One participant said we shouldn’t worry, because the Gulf is big and the chances of Ike hitting us were small. I predicted we’d see a lot of wind, rain, and flooding, something akin to Tropical Storm Allison back in 2001. Only without the...

Police Arrest 81 Looting Suspects After Ike Houston Police Department FOX 26 News HOUSTON -- Many felt disgusted after witnessing looting in the city of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina left thousands of people dead and victimized. Who would steal at a time like this? According to Houston Police Department officials, more than 75 Houstonians and counting. At least 81 people have been arrested for looting. The crimes have hit several areas of our city as Ike was making landfall and after the monster storm moved out. "It's very disheartening because there's enough tragedy to infrastructure,...to the act of a...

On what would normally be a slow summer weekday, the three employees at Gretna Gun Works Inc. frantically tended to a crush of customers admiring the racks of shotguns and rifles lined up behind the glass counter. Among the patrons: a jewelry store owner from eastern New Orleans with plans to stand guard through Gustav; two uniformed Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office deputies inquiring about additional firearms; and an avid hunter who was in to pick up a 12-gauge he dropped off for cleaning. "It's hurricane season, you definitely want it back now, right?" employee John DeRosier said with a grin...

(CBS/AP) Russia took the first steps toward a troop pullback from Georgia on Tuesday but at the same time paraded blindfolded and bound Georgian prisoners on armored vehicles and seized four U.S. Humvees. The mixed signals came as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her 25 NATO counterparts met in emergency session in Belgium and demanded Russia fulfill its promise to withdraw its forces from the small former Soviet republic. "The Russian president hasn’t kept his promise to abide by the terms of the ceasefire," Rice told CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Lara Logan in an exclusive interview...

Russian paramilitaries on the road towards Tbilisi. The Russian army left Gori in convoy and stopped about 30 miles from the city. The first armoured personnel carrier nudged past the top of the hill. It paused as if getting its bearings, and then set off towards Tbilisi. Behind it, an endless column of Russian military vehicles appeared on a shimmering horizon - trucks, tankers, and a beaten-up Nissan. ..................................... Where was he from? "Chechnya. We've come here to help," he said. For the terrified residents of Gori and surrounding villages, it didn't seem like help. Yesterday morning, as the...

A recent mission to Iraq headed by top archaeologists ... found that, contrary to received wisdom, southern Iraq's most important historic sites ... had neither been seriously damaged nor looted after the American invasion. This, according to a report by staff writer Martin Bailey in the July issue of the Art Newspaper. The article has caused confusion, not to say consternation, among archaeologists and has been largely ignored by the mainstream press. Not surprising perhaps, since reports by experts blaming the U.S. for the postinvasion destruction of Iraq's heritage have been regular fixtures of the news. Up to now ......

An unpublicized survey last month of eight of southern Iraq's most important archaeological sites by a team of international specialists found no evidence of looting since the invasion of the country in 2003 by the U.S. coalition, despite earlier, widespread claims of extensive damage. The 25-person mission, titled the Cultural Heritage Initiative, included four international archaeologists, three Iraqi archaeologists, a helicopter crew and military personnel for protection, reported the Art Newspaper. The group began their three-day survey on June 3 from Basra, staying overnight at another airbase 180 miles southeast of Baghdad. The helicopter and armed protection was provided by...

Jordan handed over nearly 2,500 stolen ancient artifacts to Iraq in a ceremony in Amman on Sunday. The repatriation is latest step in recovering about 15,000 priceless artifacts that were smuggled out of the country by looters during the chaos following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and have been turning up at art auctions around the world. Many were taken from the national museum in Baghdad, and thousands more were looted from archeolgoical sites. At the ceremony, Maha Khatib, Jordan's minister of tourism, presented the pieces to her Iraqi counterpart, Mohammed Abbas Oreibi. Oreibi told reporters that the...

During the week after Father’s Day, I received a number of interesting emails from readers asking me to write about the dearth of looting after the recent floods in Iowa. Specifically, they wanted me to write about the reason there was so much more looting in New Orleans after Katrina hit the “Chocolate City” in 2005. Of course, the problem involves so much more than race – a factor most people are thinking about, even if they won’t admit it...

Much more information over here --->>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/23/AR2006052301751.html 

BAGHDAD - The Iraqi National Museum is welcoming home 701 artifacts stolen during the looting after Saddam Hussein's ouster in 2003. Syrian authorities turned over items ranging from golden necklaces to clay pots that were seized by traffickers in the neighboring country. The antiquities were displayed in a ceremony Sunday at the Baghdad museum. Iraqi officials say Syria is the first country to hand over a large quantity of stolen antiquities. They hope others will follow its lead as Iraq struggles to restore its rich cultural heritage after five years of war. Museums were pillaged of treasures in the chaos...

screaming into its own defense. For those of you searching for the word to describe, it's called LEADERSHIP. We lead, we convince, we bargain, we bribe, we trade with, we give, we threaten, we give help we do whatever it takes to convince those most directly affected — countries like France, England, Germany and Italy — to get directly involved, and this time, finish the damn job. Serbia is not done being a pain in the world’s butt. The Serbs feel entitled to their hatred and fear. They are welcome to them; just leave the rest of us the hell...

Did you see any looters on television last week? Neither did I. When New Orleans was flooded two years ago, there were looters all over my TV screen. Men with assault rifles waded through the streets menacingly. At first, I thought I was looking at footage from Somalia, but I looked at the crawl underneath the images - it wasn’t Somalia; it was Louisiana. What about the rapists? There were rapists at the refugee camp formerly known as the Superdome, but did you see any reports about rapists at Qualcomm Stadium last week? I didn’t. Did the mayor of San...

Talk about your bigotry of low expectations . . . Brian Williams has defended armed looting during Katrina as the work of heads of family providing for their own. The NBC Nightly News anchor is in New Orleans on the second Katrina anniversary. He appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" at 7:30 A.M. EDT. Williams first passed along a predictable race-and-classed based explanation of the botched relief efforts. BRIAN WILLIAMS: That's when human life started to degrade. That's when people ran out of of bathroom facilities and started having to use the entire [Superdome]: no power, no circulating air, and worse,...

Stop The Apologizing Already Apologies must be in this year, Danes sorry for looting and pillaging MORE than 1200 years ago hordes of bloodthirsty Viking raiders descended on Ireland, pillaging monasteries and massacring the inhabitants. On Wednesday, one of their more mild-mannered descendants stepped ashore to apologise. The Danish Minister for Culture, Brian Mikkelson, who was in Dublin to celebrate the arrival of a replica Norse longboat, apologised for the invasion and destruction inflicted. "In Denmark we are certainly proud of this ship but we are not proud of the damage to the people of Ireland that followed in the...

Food and drinking water shortages, panic buying and the threat of looting have followed the worst flooding to hit England in 60 years. Amid concerns that the government-run Environment Agency acted far too slowly in responding to serious flood alerts from the Met Office, parts of the West Country woke up this morning to another day under water and the Thames Valley now faces being inundated.

A crowd on Saturday looted the home of longtime Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, destroying one of the strongest symbols of the Fatah movement in the Gaza Strip, witnesses and Fatah officials said. Fatah officials said the crowd took furniture, wall tiles and Arafat's personal belongings. (AP)

GREENSBURG, Kan. Four Fort Riley soldiers were arrested for looting from a store in Greensburg. Major General Tod Bunting, the state's adjutant general, said the soldiers came to Greensburg to help on their own, and were not part of any official detachment. Few details were available, but Bunting says the four went into a store last night and took more merchandise than the owner wanted them to take. He was not sure what store they went into, but it was one of the few buildings still standing after Friday night's storm. Bunting also did not know exactly what the soldiers...

Looting troops prey on Somalia's refugees Fugitives are forced to pay to shelter in the shade Sam Kiley Sunday April 29, 2007 The Observer (UK) During a lull in fighting in Mogadishu yesterday, survivors picked their way through the post-apocalyptic landscape of Somalia's capital, quickly burying bodies. The floors and stairs of the filthy hospitals were crammed with injured civilians and slick with blood. Up to 350,000 refugees from fighting were camped in the bush - easy prey for armed thugs and warlords. Almost two weeks of heavy fighting and indiscriminate shelling between Islamic militia and clan fighters battling Ethiopian...

George Soros has surfaced again-this time in Europe, where he is urging members of the EU to stop worrying about a constitution,and dance to his "Open Society" tune. This "pied piper" has quite a few tapping their feet to his music in this country too-Lord help us !

Marine to return ancient signature seals to Iraq PHILADELPHIA A U-S Marine who brought home seemingly cheap souvenirs from Iraq has turned them over to authorities after learning they are ancient stone seals used as signature stamps.The Marine paid a vendor a few hundred dollars for the eight seals, and had them examined by a university archaeologist upon his return. The seals were looted from an archaeological site near Babylon. They are about five-thousand years old and valued at two-thousand to five-thousand dollars each. U-S soldiers are allowed to bring back souvenirs and trinkets, but Assistant U-S Attorney Bob Goldman...

Entire Darfur village of 55,000 flees after raids by Janjaweed gunmen By David Blair in Menawashi (Filed: 04/02/2006) Exhausted refugees were building ramshackle shelters in a dry river bed yesterday after 55,000 people fled a raid mounted by the Janjaweed militia in the Sudanese province of Darfur. It was the biggest movement of refugees there so far this year. The victims, many of whom have fled attacks twice or even three times before, are camped around the town of Menawashi in southern Darfur. They abandoned the nearby town of Mershing after two attacks from the pro-regime militia in the space...

The Clarion Ledger/Gannett Rules. URL Link: http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060703/NEWS/607030352

<p>KENNER, La. (AP) - Three people convicted of hauling away liquor, wine and beer from a grocery store after Hurricane Katrina were sentenced Wednesday to 15 years in prison.</p> <p>The judge said he wanted to send a message that looting would not be tolerated when he gave the maximum sentence to Coralnelle Little, 36, Rhonda McGowen, 42, and Paul C. Pearson, 36, all of Kenner.</p>

Russia is growing, and so are the shadows that are cast over the business proceedings there. The bureaucracy is still extremely burdensome and growing. And laws are a matter of convenience and seemingly circumvented at will -- or at least when you have the right connections. Corruption and middlemen are a matter of course, and bribes are expected and given. Confiscation of private goods -- i.e., Motorola's ongoing fiasco -- and resale for profit is old news. Legitimate dealings are called smuggling. And smuggling is called smuggling. Russian law allows confiscated material in criminal investigations to be sold or destroyed...

Four New Orleans police officers have been cleared of allegations that they looted a Wal-Mart store after Hurricane Katrina, but each was suspended 10 days for not stopping civilians from ransacking the store, the Police Department said. The probe stemmed from an MSNBC report that showed the officers filling a shopping cart with shoes, clothes and other items. When a reporter asked the officers what they were doing, one responded, "Looking for looters" and turned her back. Assistant Police Chief Marlon Defillo, commander of the Public Integrity Bureau, said the officers seen on the video were recently cleared of looting...

NOPD clears cops in looting probe They had OK to take clothing, officials say Saturday, March 18, 2006 By Michael Perlstein Staff writer Four New Orleans police officers have been cleared of looting allegations stemming from a news videotape that shows them taking items from the Uptown Wal-Mart two days after Hurricane Katrina, but the officers were suspended for 10 days for failing to stop civilians from cleaning out the ransacked store, the New Orleans Police Department said Friday. Advertisement The video, shot by an MSNBC crew inside Wal-Mart, shows the officers filling a shopping cart with shoes, clothes and...

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 7 (UPI) -- Much of the looting that was shown on TV newscasts and in newspaper photographs after Hurricane Katrina has vanished from New Orleans police reports. The New Orleans Police Department has used a special code, 21K, to designate property that disappeared during or after the storm as "lost or stolen," the New Orleans Times-Picayune said. Possible crimes with that designation do not show up in the city's crime statistics. The 21K designation has been used for 62 percent of the missing property complaints made in the city since Katrina struck in late August. In some...

Louisiana Woman Charged After Hurricane Katrina Left Area in Ruins GRETNA, La. (Jan. 13) - A church deaconess and great-grandmother jailed for two weeks after being accused of looting sausage during Hurricane Katrina will not be prosecuted. Merlene Maten, 73, learned of the decision Wednesday when she appeared in court for her arraignment, said her attorney, Daniel Becnel III. "My God tells me it's best to give than to receive. So for anybody to even think of accusing me of doing something like that, it just sickens me to my stomach. But thank God, thank God, thank God it's over,"...

the trial lawyers. The city is awash with writ-writing attorneys -- most from Louisiana but some nationally recognizable -- looking to profit from the misery inflicted by nature. Already, they have filed class-action lawsuits against the oil and natural gas industry, insurance companies and governments. More suits are coming, with possible defendants including relief agencies such as the American Red Cross. ("Thanks for your help. See you in court.") The lure is the "prospect of big settlements," The Baltimore Sun reports. Among the more lecherous litigators is Joseph Larre. He normally handles criminal cases, but his 300 clients were evacuated...

We are finally getting back to normal, as the state Legislature convenes today, apparently prepared to enrich its own members and incur ruinous debts for the taxpayer. Gov. Kathleen Blanco's call for the Katrina session will remove any doubts in Washington that Louisiana does not deserve the money it is requesting for relief and cannot be trusted with a dime. Blanco, who came to office touting ethics, says it is perfectly fine for public officials to handle government reconstruction contracts on the side. "They are private citizens initially," Blanco said. But contractors who are just private citizens will be at...

President Bush’s advisers insist that he’s not abandoning conservatism in his commitment to rebuild the Gulf Coast. But a mark of conservative thinking is properly identifying problems before dedicating billions to solving them. The president hasn’t done that in New Orleans. Instead, in his September 15 speech from Jackson Square, Bush vowed to combat “poverty”—a foe that cities and the feds have never conquered in their long war against urban decay. In the language of Lyndon Johnson, Bush ascribed the violence and desperation Americans saw in New Orleans in the days after Hurricane Katrina to “deep, persistent poverty in this...

CANCUN, Mexico, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Dazed foreign tourists stranded in stinking shelters in this hurricane-hit Mexican beach resort demanded to be rescued on Monday, and President Vicente Fox lost his cool at slow aid efforts. Toilets overflowed and food was scarce at refuges in Cancun, where some 20,000 vacationers spent their fifth day sleeping on floors or in stuffy rooms without electricity or running water. ~Snip~An outbreak of looting over the weekend added to the chaos and forced the government to deploy troops to halt the lawlessness. A fist fight broke out overnight at the El Forito theater, which...

CANCUN, Mexico - Mexicans and stranded tourists, hungry and frustrated after a two-day beating by Hurricane Wilma, stood in line to buy supplies Sunday or simply raided grocery or furniture stores, dragging goods from shops ripped open by the storm. The hurricane's steady march toward southern Florida meant an end here to two days of howling winds and torrential rains that shattered windows, peeled away roofing and sent the ocean crashing into hotel lobbies. The sun emerged over Mexico's sugar-white Caribbean beaches. But another kind of chaos took over, as police shot into the air to scare looters away from...

TOLEDO, Ohio — A crowd that gathered to protest a white supremacists' march Saturday turned violent, throwing baseball-sized rocks at police and vandalizing vehicles.

Making a forceful first appearance as acting New Orleans police chief and attempting to deflect growing criticism of the New Orleans Police Department's behavior after Hurricane Katrina, acting Superintendent Warren Riley announced Thursday he has suspended four officers without pay and put more than a dozen others under investigation. The investigations stem from a handful of events during which the officers were accused of looting, or failed to combat looting, Riley said. He declined to name the locations at which the officers' alleged activity or inaction occurred, except for the Sewell Cadillac Chevrolet dealership in the Central Business District. "I...

9 News first brought you the story of some alleged looting by NOPD officers holed up in a Canal Street hotel in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Thursday, an investigation was launched to find out if any of those officers will face charges. Initially, 9 News crews set out to investigate the condition of some of the hospitals in and around Canal Street on that Sunday morning, but their focus quickly shifted to the Amerihost Inn and Suites. Their attention was drawn to the hotel by a man waving to them out of a second story window. The man told...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The police department has launched an investigation into whether officers participated in the giant looting spree that overtook the city after Hurricane Katrina, a spokesman said Thursday. News reports in the aftermath of the storm put officers at the scene of some of the heaviest looting, the Wal-Mart in the Lower Garden District. Some witnesses — including a Times-Picayune reporter — said police were taking items from shelves. "Out of 1,750 officers, we're looking into the possibility that maybe 12 officers were involved in misconduct," police spokesman Marlon Defillo said. He rejected the use of the...

Excerpt from transcript of tonight's Paula Zahn yack show on CNN......GRIFFIN (voice-over): It could be the single worst moment in the history of the New Orleans Police Department. And it centers on what happened at this Canal Street hotel. The night New Orleans flooded, Osman Khan says 70 officers moved into his Amerihost Inn and Suites; 62 of them then went out to fight the looters and thugs. But eight officers, he says, began a four-day-long looting spree of their own. OSMAN KHAN, HOTEL MANAGER: Oh, yes. They would probably leave around 9:00, 10:00 at night and come back around...